


thrive

by heavensabove



Series: anika trevelyan & her circumstances [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Family Bonding, Fluff, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, just life in flow, they have a cabin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25976386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavensabove/pseuds/heavensabove
Summary: (It looks like nothing at all and everything; a skeleton on a denuded patch of ground and a pulsating vessel that’s already filling itself with their life.)Anika, Thom, and a life in the Hinterlands.
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Blackwall/Female Trevelyan (Dragon Age)
Series: anika trevelyan & her circumstances [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749697
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

The stream burbles and sings next to her as she balances herself on a rock, tucking the ends of her tan dress underneath her folded legs. She sweeps strands of hair away from her eyes, leans her head over the stream and watches the water ripple over pebbles, tiny fish whizzing along one after the other. To the left of her, the sharp thud-thud-thud of axe splitting wood continues.

She watches as one fish, smaller even than the others, colored a little differently --- a lighter, almost white silver --- slips in the space between two pebbles and squiggles out playfully. She smiles, reaches a finger in but that fish is gone. Other fish gather around curiously, bubbling up the surface with their breathing; she moves her finger in a circle and they jerk, scatter. She laughs, retrieves her hand and uses it to rest her chin as she watches the fish resume their journey.

“Enjoying yourself?” Thom asks as he pauses between strikes.

Anika looks over her shoulder. Thom sets another log on the stump, readies the axe; she can see his skin through his white tunic rendered translucent by sweat. His muscles tighten as he raises his arms, bulge out when he brings the axe down, neatly bisecting the wood that’ll soon become part of their house.

Anika runs her hand down the front of her bodice, drying it, and smooths down her skirt.

“I was looking at the fish,” she says. “The stream is lovely. This whole place is lovely. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

“Me neither,” Thom says, chopping another log.

Anika looks out at the forest across the stream, green and dense, curtaining them from whatever lies beyond. Birds ensconced in their nests call from branches as if in greeting, little button eyes watching alertly as she and Thom build theirs. A high tittering chirp makes Anika sit up, cup her fingers around her mouth.

Thom bursts into laughter when she lets out a long, high-pitched coo.

* * *

The basic structure of their little cabin goes up quickly. Anika parts the flaps of their tent in the night, stares at it as Thom sleeps. It looks like nothing at all and everything; a skeleton on a denuded patch of ground and a pulsating vessel that’s already filling itself with their life.

Anika looks at Thom to make sure he’s undisturbed, then tiptoes out, her bare feet sinking in the slightly damp earth, picking up blades of grass. She stands in front of the house, touches a beam so gently that she might not have touched it at all. Then she kneels down and digs her fingers into some loosened dirt where she imagines the entrance will be, brings up a fist full of it. Brings it up to her nose, inhales deeply, clenches her hand so it won’t slip out as she turns and starts to walk back.

She slows. Thom stares back at her, one hand holding aside a corner of the flap. She looks down at her fist, then up at him, and smiles.

Thom returns it with a slight upward curl of his lips, his eyes soft with fondness. He steps back and lets her in, helps her find a pouch to put the dirt in.

* * *

The wind is seeping through the fabric of their tent and chilling them in their bedrolls by the time the house comes into a livable state, and Anika is glad to move everything in, even if the floors are unfinished and there’s nothing in the way of a furnace. They set their bedding where they’ve decided they want the bedroom, build a small fire two feet away.

Anika latches the temporary slab of wood they’ve secured the entrance with when Thom goes out to hunt for supper, tucks herself and a dagger into her bedroll. She watches the flames writhe up and down as she waits, scratching little x’s into the dirt to count every half hour.

She’s accumulated a neat row of five x’s when Thom calls softly from behind the wood and she struggles up, unlatches and pulls away the barrier. He holds up three small nugs he’s tied together and shakes his head sheepishly.

She shakes her own head. “It’ll do. We’re not throwing a banquet.” That earns her a grin.

They both go out to dress the catch, sitting on their knees in front of the semi-frozen stream, working with daggers to separate the skin from the flesh, split the piglets down their fronts, pulling out innards and rinsing and making small cuts all along the meat.

Anika sets the nugs in a basket and goes inside while Thom cleans the tools. She rubs them down with salt and spices that she appropriated from Skyhold’s kitchens, waits for Thom who comes in a minute later and helps her spit the nugs and lay them over the fire. They snuggle together as they watch the meat cook, kissing lazily when that isn’t enough.

They barely comprehend when they fall back onto their bedding. The meat sizzles and pops as Thom hitches Anika’s dress up, as Anika undoes the tie of his trousers. Their gasps and moans compete with the sounds of the fire. By the time they’re done, so is their supper, golden and dripping.

They smile as they fix each others clothes, as he smooths her hair into place and presses his lips against her forehead. They part briefly so Anika can retrieve plates and utensils and Thom can carve the meat up into bite-size pieces. They press back together to eat, end up feeding each other, giggle and snicker throughout the meal.

After they’ve finished, Anika gathers up the dishes and trudges outside to wash, stops when a feathery white orb floats down and settles on her cheek. She touches it and it dissolves under the heat of her finger.

“Thom,” she turns and calls into the house. “It’s beginning to snow.”

He gets up and leans his head out the doorway, looking up at the sky. More flakes of snow drift down, swaying delicately like tiny dancers following one after another.

“I had better get the floors and windows done,” he says, catching a snowflake on his thumb. “And I’ll need to head into Redcliffe to see about getting a fireplace fitted in here.” He wipes his hand on his trousers.

Anika turns and looks up, tilting her head. “Time passes like water, doesn’t it?” She looks at the stream, at water moving sluggishly under a crystallized sheet of itself. “Sometimes I wish I could slow it just a little bit.”

* * *

It’s around the time Thom finishes work on the bed, sets it in place behind a partition, that Anika is struck with a dizzy spell. She’s washing potatoes by a pot of warm water outside and her vision swims, the earth veers right and left like a cart passing over rocks, and she stumbles back, the basket clattering on the ground, her elbow hitting the pot and splashing water on the hearth.

Thom comes out and finds her keeling over, her hand to her head.

“Are you alright?” he asks frantically as he helps her up. She wobbles and he draws her up against himself. He leads her inside, makes her sit and prepares a cup of tea but she brings it to her lips and the moment the scent hits her nose, she gags and hands it back.

They forget about this when she feels better an hour later, is herself again moving about and carrying out chores. But at supper she merely picks at the food, her stomach roiling. She goes to bed with a headache, swallowing every few seconds like something’s pushing up her throat.

The next morning she startles Thom leaping off the bed, ripping through the house and falling on her knees outside so she can spill bits of bread and stomach acid on the frosted grass. Thom comes out in the biting air in just the loose, unbuttoned tunic he wore to bed, walking slowly as if afraid to spook a jittery halla.

Anika heaves, clutches her stomach and makes little moaning sounds, her stomach rumbling and trying to force out things that simply aren’t there. After a few moments of this, she swallows rapidly and breathes, wipes her mouth with her hand. She turns and finds Thom looming over her, his expression unreadable.

As they stare at one another, realization trickles in. Anika lowers her hand, her lips quivering, eyes starting to burn. Thom kneels and puts his hands on her shoulders, his own eyes glistening. Anika smiles at him, bites her lip, laughs a little and tears slide down her cheeks as she presses her face into Thom’s shuddering chest.

* * *

The midwife they find at a small settlement a few dozen miles away is loving and attentive, overcome by what she says is the sweetness in Anika’s face, though it escapes neither Anika nor Thom how her eyes linger where Anika’s left arm ends. They take it in stride; they’ve learned to tolerate the pity people dole out.

They go as usual for their weekly visit, and the middle-aged woman gently presses Anika’s stomach, feels for the growing, squirming life within. It’s been four months, and Anika’s belly is rounding out, rising almost unnoticeably under her dresses but readily visible when bare.

“Oh, my,” the midwife says suddenly, hand pausing as her fingers sink into the flesh.

“What?” Thom asks sharply, instantly on his feet.

Anika’s face starts to fall. She looks between the midwife and Thom.

“I can’t be sure of anything _yet_ ,” the midwife says, rubbing Anika’s stomach, “But I feel there might be more than one in there.”

The words drop with a thud on them both. Anika grips the mattress, staring down at her bump in wonder. Thom stares at the midwife for a long, long time.

“I’ll need to build a bigger crib than I anticipated,” Thom says on the ride back, holding Anika securely on his lap. “Thank the Maker I didn’t start it yet.”

“She said she isn’t sure,” Anika says, her hand over her stomach.

“Still,” he says, “Better to be prepared. At the worst, the little one’ll just have a lot of room to wriggle about.”

They go quiet as the cart trundles along, the horses clip-clopping over dirt, a lively and rhythmic sound that coaxes Anika into closing her eyes.

“I wonder how I’ll handle two at once?” Anika murmurs, head lolling against Thom’s shoulder.

“Aren’t I here?” he replies, patting her hair.

* * *

Six months along, Anika rests her head on their kitchen table, staring out the window at their little garden, a medium-sized patch of dark earth just now yielding minuscule green buds.

Thom sets his cup down, steam still rising from it. He nudges a plate of quartered apples towards her, but she only flicks an unenthusiastic gaze towards it before returning to the garden.

“Maker, will I have to force feed you?” He sighs.

“I want to tend the crops.”

“Don’t even dream of it until next year.”

“Can’t I at least water them sometimes?”

“No.”

Anika huffs, lifts her head and rests it on her hand. “You’re overdoing it.”

“How’s your backache?”

A corner of her mouth quirks up in annoyance and Thom hides his smirk behind his cup.

They sit in silence finishing their tea. Anika eyes him as she nibbles on a piece of apple.

“I should’ve informed my family a long time ago.”

“We should inform them now.”

“And…them, too. Our friends. I should’ve told Dorian through the crystal. Maker knows why I didn’t.”

He chuckles. “I’m sort of glad you haven’t. He’ll probably leave everything and come running.”

Anika smiles wistfully, her eyes falling to her empty cup. “I miss them, really. All of them.”

“It’s been a while,” Thom says softly.

That evening, Anika takes out the crystal and taps it, beams when Dorian’s voice streams in and fills the room. After a short conversation, she brings the crystal up until it's nearly touching her lips and whispers the news.

It’s not Dorian who arrives. One day Anika looks out the window and sees a pair of horns and wide, muscled shoulders emerging from the woods.

Iron Bull boisterously congratulates them both, claps Thom so hard on the back he almost topples to the ground, feels Anika’s bulging stomach and makes ridiculous jokes about twins until the sky darkens.

Anika asks him if he can’t stay for a few days, but he shakes his head ruefully. Standing in the doorway that night, shrugging his cloak on, he turns to Thom and says, “Take good care of this life you’ve got.”

* * *

Anika begins a letter to her family, and another to Varric, through whom she’s sure the rest of their friends will come to know one way or another. Thom stands next to her and looks over her shoulder as she writes, her handwriting looping and twirling delicately.

They send them on and wait. It takes only a few weeks for an envelope bearing the seal of House Trevelyan to arrive.

Anika rips it open. Thom catches its eviscerated remains as she hurriedly unfolds the letter and reads, chewing her lip. He leans against the wall and watches a wide, sunny smile spread itself across her face.

She looks to him, lowering the letter until it covers her mouth and chin. “My mother and sister are coming.”

Thom had been smiling at her smile, and he keeps on smiling as she giggles happily and runs past him to their room, not seeing how in her absence his face falls into a nervous grimace.

Anika spends the next week trying to make their home positively glitter inside and out, with Thom following her around and protesting at the amount of movement, wresting heavy things out of her grasp, holding her around the waist so she won’t get on her knees to scrub the floor. Eventually he puts her on the bed and makes her swear on his life that she won’t move, taking up the duty of cleaning and decorating the house himself.

The day the carriage pulls up, Anika’s excitement bursts through the doors and windows with the force of a small tornado. She’s waddling towards the entrance before Thom can form the ‘let’ of ‘let me help.’ He rushes after her and then stands in the doorway, tethered to the hinges with some invisible thread as Lady Trevelyan disembarks, then her elder daughter, who bears such a striking resemblance to Anika that Thom has to blink twice and squint to spot a difference.

The sisters hug, Anika’s stomach large and awkward between them. Lady Trevelyan pets her younger daughter’s cheek with obvious affection, looks her up and down with a wistfulness that springs from the distance of over a year. Then they all turn to look at Thom, who shrinks back the slightest bit.

“I would’ve called you ‘son’,” Lady Trevelyan says standing in their sitting room, “but I feel calling you ‘brother’ is more appropriate.” There’s humor in her voice, not a trace of venom. Her eyes sparkle softly with playful amusement and Thom understands then where Anika’s eyes, their capability to convey a multitude of thoughts and feelings, come from.

Shehnaz, whose voice has no dissimilarity at all to Anika’s, calls him ‘uncle’ before Anika glares and complains and she dissolves into a peal of laughter. Thom stares at Anika, and in that look he passes to her his surprise and his relief at how pleasant this all is, how utterly different from those horrible days and nights at the Winter Palace, where Lady Trevelyan would stare at him as if he was an interloper, where her sons would treat him like empty air and her husband like a constant thorn in his eye.

They sit down to lunch, then have tea, and Thom finds out many things that Anika would’ve wished for him never to know: that as a young girl she had convinced herself she was a dragon hatchling, stomping around her bedroom with her arms tucked in, growling instead of speaking, eating off her plate with her mouth instead of using cutlery; that as a teenager she had nearly run away with a traveling troupe of bards; that she had developed a crush on a middle-aged carpenter once just because his beard was very long, weeping on and off for three days when he finished his job and left.

“So _that’s_ why you fell for me?” Thom asks her, quirking a brow.

“I didn’t even remember him after that year,” Anika mutters.

“Oh, but I found a mention of him in your diary about a year before the Conclave?” Shehnaz says, resting her chin on her joined hands.

“I wrote stupid things in my diary because I knew you read it!”

And so it goes until evening, until they all gather around the gently flickering fireplace and Lady Trevelyan brings out a velvet pouch, pulls its drawstring loose and tips out a shimmering gold chain. It reflects itself in Anika’s pupils as Lady Trevelyan holds it up, smiles. Hanging from it is an oblong pendant inset with a miniature of Andraste.

“For your safety, and that of the life you carry within,” Lady Trevelyan says as she steps forward and slips it around Anika’s neck. Anika touches the pendant, holds it up and stares at it, a sheen of tears in her eyes.

Thom watches with a smile incommensurate to the contentment in his heart. Then Lady Trevelyan turns her gaze on him, startling him out of his relaxed pose. She holds out her hand towards Shehnaz, who promptly places a small wooden box in it, then comes toward Thom.

“For you,” she says, putting the box in Thom’s palm and holding his hand with both of hers. “In our family, it is tradition to present sons-in-law with rings bearing the family insignia.”

Thom’s eyes widen and his mouth opens, but he can’t even begin to find words.

“I know you’re not formally married to Anika,” Lady Trevelyan continues, “but in my mind, it isn’t exchanging vows that matters here. It’s that you love and care for her as a husband should. I…I had my misgivings, but you’ve proven me wrong.”

Thom opens the box only after they’ve left, staring down at the thick, square band with muted awe. Anika walks up behind him, leaning her head against his shoulder.

“Put it on,” she says. When he doesn’t make a move to do anything, she plucks the box from him, takes the ring out with her teeth and turns him around. She slips the ring onto his middle finger and grins. “Perfect,” she says and kisses him.


	2. Chapter 2

Thom crafts a chest, a sturdy rectangular box onto which he carves blooming Dawn Lotuses --- Anika’s favorite flower --- and hallas on the banks of rivers with their necks bent and snouts to the water. He etches in those parakeets from the Frostback Basin who startled and delighted Anika in equal measure whenever they took off squawking. Its lid he makes much lighter than the body, so she can lift it easily when she places in all the letters and gifts that keep coming.

Cassandra has written almost every week since she got the news, and Josephine and Yvette have sent nightclothes in bundles for the babies. Cullen sent a stuffed bear his sister sewed, then sent another with an apologetic letter; he hadn’t considered that one bear wouldn’t be enough, that the babies might fight over it.

Some things are surprising, such as Scout Harding --- who Anika addresses now as Lace without any hesitation --- arriving one morning with a bag full of booties and caps and linens for a crib, all from her mother’s hand. She’s emotionally blackmailed into staying the night, and her presence Anika considers another gift. They chitchat more than sleep, laughingly recalling the first excursion to the Fallow Mire, when Anika had uncharacteristically cursed up a storm as a pair of undead chased them back to camp.

Some things are ostentatious, but who is more known for his grandiloquence than Dorian Pavus? The rocking chair he sends is plush and ornately carved, the seat covered in thick, embossed velvet cloth. When Anika sits on it, she’s reminded of the throne at Skyhold.

“All I need now is someone to judge,” she jokes, scooting and adjusting. She points her index finger at Thom. “For the crime of making me bloated and achy, I sentence you to rubbing my feet.”

“Hardly a punishment,” he replies, smirking. She flushes sightly, stifling a laugh, then shrugs and leans back. He wipes his wet hands on a dishrag then, as he passes her, flicks it so its end playfully swats against her head. Her yelp draws a deep chuckle out of him.

* * *

The midwife approximated a date, but three days pass it by before Anika and Thom realize she was off. They don’t worry; it wasn’t set it in stone. But then three days turn into three weeks, and anxiety pokes little holes into their patience and composure. The babies kick and wiggle around with a new intensity, as if they’ve had enough of the womb, and Anika frets: what if they hurt one another? What if they move so much that they get tangled in the umbilical cords?

Thom is good at looking calm, his practiced stoicism a blessing because he can soothe Anika convincingly, keep her distress from overwhelming her. But he found out a long time ago that he and panic are bosom-buddies when it comes to Anika; that his heart tears itself from its place in his chest and goes everywhere --- digging a pit in his stomach, blocking his airway --- whenever even the notion of something happening to her appears.

It’s trebled now. He has to stop his hands from shaking when he holds her, when he presses his palm to her belly and pleads silently for his children to still themselves. They don’t listen, of course; he has a feeling that raising them he’ll finally know what it was like for his father to raise him.

Anika goes to sleep at night with her fingers curled around Andraste in her pendant, her head on Thom’s chest. Thom does not sleep.

That’s how he knows when it happens. A sudden wetness spreads itself under her and touches his skin through his trousers. He’s up before she stirs, though it doesn’t take long for her to feel it and wake. Then the pain, in slow and intermittent waves. Anika stares up at him with wide, uncertain eyes.

“It’ll go well,” he says. “It will. It has to.”

The cart Thom had paid to stay close arrives in half an hour. The driver has lined the whole of it with sacks cut open and spread out, used old cushions to pad the sides, and he helps Thom put Anika in, put in the things she’ll need and the pillow from their bed that Thom places under her sweat-drenched head. But she moves, rests her head instead on Thom’s lap and grips his hand tightly.

“Trust in Andraste!” the driver says as he mounts the horse.

But tears slip out of Anika’s eyes as they ride along. Ten minutes after they’ve commenced the journey, she looks up at Thom and whispers, “What if I don’t make it?”

“Quiet,” Thom mutters.

“One of my father’s sisters died in childbirth.”

“You’re not your father’s sister---Maker, just don’t.”

“What if something happens to one of them?” Anika sobs, “What if something happens to both of them?”

“They’ll be fine.” Thom squeezes her hand.

“If anything happens, I hope it happens to me.” Anika bites her lip. “But then what will happen to you?”

“Why don’t you just strangle me right now and take care of it, woman?” Thom growls, then shakes his head.

Things go quiet for a moment, only the cart’s wheels competing with the horses’ hooves on the dusty, cragged ground.

Then Anika says, “Find someone nice and marry her, like that friend of yours who owns a bakery. She should be kind to our children, and she should be a good cook. It’s been my regret that I’m so lousy at cooking.”

“I _swear_ ,” Thom groans, then covers her mouth with his hand. “Enough.”

A few minutes of Anika’s muffled protests later, the cart stops in front of the midwife’s house.

* * *

“Please, shut your eyes for at least an hour,” the midwife admonishes him as she walks past but Thom cannot bring himself to move.

Behind him, Anika sleeps senselessly under a bundle of blankets. She hasn’t stirred in several hours, but she’s breathing evenly, murmuring occasionally, so Thom isn’t nervous. She needs her rest, after what she’s gone through.

His daughters lie swaddled in cotton on a small cot, beside which he sits like a guardian statue. Now and then he reaches out to touch their doughy soft heads, caress their puffy cheeks, and a love like he’s never felt before rises up in him and seems to strain at the seams of his being. How can he ever convey what he feels through clumsy touches or trite words? He brushes his fingers over one baby’s button nose and smiles when she scrunches up her face.

It’ll be a few days still before they can set off for their house, as Anika needs to regain her strength and learn to feed the babies regularly, and the babies themselves need to become more stable; they haven’t even opened their eyes yet. Thom can spend the rest of his life sitting in this little room, can spend it anywhere as long as they’re by his side.

He looks at Anika, her head lolling on the pillow damp with her drool. He looks back at the twins. In his mind, he skips ahead a month, a year, two years, three. There are dark, curly hairs already on his daughters’ heads --- he doesn’t know whether it was he or Anika who bestowed it --- and he imagines them growing long and wavy. He imagines braiding them, or tying them up in pigtails that bob and swish as the girls run and play.

Their house will bustle: his daughters laughing, his daughters clambering over furniture and stomping all over grass, jumping and splashing in the stream. His Anika, too, a child again with them, chasing them, protecting them, giggling and squealing with them.

A few years ago, he would not have dreamed of any of this, nor considered himself worthy of it. But things are different now. _He_ is different, better.

Thom gets up and walks over to Anika’s bedside, reaches down to smooth his palm over her hair. He kisses her on the cheek, lays his head next to her stomach and closes his eyes.

* * *

It’s been a while since Anika’s felt the absence. She had gotten used to it, finding new ways to do old things. But she’s crestfallen when she realizes she can’t hold both of her infants at the same time, can’t press them properly to her bosom. Thom fashions a type of basket that more resembles a washing board, square and wide but curling around the edges, pliable. They can put the twins in and Anika can wrap her arm around it, hold them both that way.

“I can’t touch them enough like this,” she laments, but makes up for what she can’t do with her hand with lips and nose, pressing little kisses all over their small faces, rubbing her nose against theirs, feeling their soft skin with her cheek. When she nurses, Thom helps her, holding one up against Anika’s left breast while she holds the other to her right.

They name them at the end of their first month. The elder by minutes coos and kicks her feet, always struggling against her swaddling; Anika brings her up and whispers against her forehead, “Saira.” A free flying bird, never in one place for too long.

The younger moves less, but her eyes, which she opened before her sister, are never still; they’re like marbles, shining in the light, rolling around trying to see everything. Thom finds himself entranced by her gaze, by the deep darkness of her pupils. Anika rubs her tiny palm between her thumb and forefinger as she says, “Zahra.” Bright and beautiful.

After they’re nursed, Thom always carries one around against his shoulder, rubbing and patting her back with his large, hesitant hand. Anika watches him as she burps the other, smiles at his timidity.

“Thom, you could never hurt them,” she says. “You’re not capable of that.”

But he’s never sure. His hand could come down too hard, a force that would be nothing to any adult or even an older child, but his daughters feel like tufts of cotton. He handles them like he would handle one of Varric’s explosive traps; he’ll die if he makes one of them cry in pain, even a little.

He remains the same even as they grow, take up larger amounts of space in the crib he built and put against the wall across from his and Anika’s bed. They move around more, make noises more frequently and louder than before; sometimes they cry the night away. They learn to play with and punish Cullen’s bears, with Zahra chewing an ear until stuffing fluffs out.

Around five months, they suddenly realize that the other exists and is within reach. One night Thom snaps out of a light doze because of a wail emanating from the foot of the bed. He rushes to his children, and finds Saira staring nonplussed at her sister, who shrieks and punches and kicks the air.

“What’s wrong?” Anika asks.

Thom shakes his head and picks Zahra up, soothes her until she’s sniffling then tucks her back into the crib. He rubs her belly, then kisses her forehead. He kisses Saira’s forehead as well, pulls their blanket over them. As he’s about to turn around, Saira raises her fist. He stops but before he can even understand what’s happening, the fist flies out and connects with a thwack against Zahra’s nose.

“Maker’s b---” he cuts himself off as Zahra begins to wail and assault the air anew. “For the love of Andraste, is this how you treat your little sister?”

“What did Saira do?” Anika ambles up to the crib.

“She thinks her sister is a practice dummy,” Thom says as he picks Zahra up once more. Saira stares up at the three of them in bewilderment.

“She’s just playing,” Anika says, reaching down to pet Saira’s head. “You know, I used to bite my older brothers so hard, they bled.”

“And so far I was afraid they’d take too much after me,” he mutters, starting the process of placating Zahra all over again.

* * *

“How long did you spend without?”

Thom cracks open one eye to look at Anika, her face illuminated by small shards of moonlight. Their daughters snuffle away in their crib, for once sleeping in the night.

“Without what?” he asks, voice heavy and worn.

“Sex,” Anika says bluntly, and Thom feels slumber begin to leach away.

“Ah, what?”

“You said once that it had been a while…remember, the day we first kissed?”

“And this is being brought up because?”

“Answer me first.”

“For as long as I was pretending to be Blackwall.”

“Wow,” Anika says. “I’m not like you at all.”

“Right, I went a few years and you went twenty three.”

“Well, at this moment I’ve gone nearly eight months without.” Anika flattens her hand against Thom’s chest, her leg creeping up his thigh. “And I’m tired.”

Thom blinks, now utterly alert.

“The girls,” he says as she slips her hand under his nightshirt.

“We’ll be really quiet,” Anika whispers, scooting closer and curling her body around his.

“They may wake up.” His arms wrap around her regardless.

“We’ll deal with it then,” she says and sucks his bottom lip into her mouth.

He pulls away but not far. He stares down into Anika’s face, at her heavy lids and flushed cheeks. His blood pumps faster through his veins and heat blooms in his stomach, spreads downward, suffuses his skin.

“Always the risk-taker,” he murmurs and lifts her dress up above her waist. Anika stifles a gasp and a long moan against his shoulder as he pushes his fingers inside her.

The twins, thankfully, sleep through all of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After two months, the second part! And yes, the ending is abrupt because these two months I spent wrestling with a massive writer's block that's still mostly refusing to fuck off and I _wanted_ a longer, better second part with more family time and at least one fishing episode but that's not to be right now and it kept me bothering me that I left this undone so (:

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This fic was supposed to be a one-shot of about 2500 words but as usual things have gotten out of hand.  
> 2\. [ Shehnaz Trevelyan](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Nmjv11wGJ_tWZVe1EZy_htba3yb7N1ja/view?usp=sharing) is the Inquisitor from my first abortive attempt at playing DAI; [Lady (or Najila) Trevelyan](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NnAupJakKgYYMGDvC62k1Zoki0gzq0cM/view?usp=sharing) is the actress Shabana Azmi, who both Shehnaz and Anika ended up looking like through no conscious effort on my part.


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